During the last week the observing schedule was interrupted for a Target of Opportunity observation of Mrk421 on July 1.

Preparations continue on schedule for the planned swap from IRU-1 to IRU-2 gyros on July 19. The IRU-1 gyro-1 current remains noisy with a base level near 150 mA.

Of note last week, changes were made to the flight software on July 2 to improve power sub-system manangement for eclipses, which also resulted in simpler ground operations for eclipses and improved autonomous power management.

The ground system was reverted to ONLS 3.8.2 on June 27, while issues with command script processing are resolved in ONLS 3.9.3. Normal flight operations were continued without interruption during the ground system update.

A Chandra press release was issued on June 30 describing a series of observations of a jet of high-energy particles emanating from the Vela pulsar, which show unprecedented rapid variability in the both the shape and brightness of the jet. For details see:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/03_releases/press_063003.html.

The observing schedule for next week is shown below, which includes coordinated observations of 3C273 with the XMM and Integral observatories and of Baade's Window with HST.